The Model Royals
To build a favorable image with the public, one had to wear a mask in every corner of one's life — thoroughly, without a single crack. The people had to be shown an exemplary face at all times.
Waldemar had lived behind a mask since childhood, and so this particular demand gave him little trouble. The one who struggled was Alix.
The girl who had been raised so innocently found the wearing of a mask a genuine hardship. This was a different matter entirely from forcing a smile when high society required it.
"That is why practice is necessary, Your Highness."
With the help of the people Waldemar had brought in, Alix practiced how to put on a face and deal with the world from behind it.
"Now — again. We shall start from the beginning."
An actress Waldemar had specially engaged took charge of guiding Alix in the governance of her emotions. The woman was a veteran of more than twenty years upon the operatic stage.
"I—"
Alix was on the point of saying she could not do it, and then she swallowed the words.
I can. I can do this. For His Highness.
She returned herself to an elegant posture and prepared her line. The actress spoke with perfect composure.
"What a delicious-looking soup. I should like some myself."
Alix tried to follow the line. But facing the filthy soup upon the table, the words would not come. The mere sight of the black hairs clinging to the rim of the bowl, and of insects whose names she did not care to know, was enough to turn her stomach.
I can say it.
She fought the nausea down and forced the words out.
"Th-this really does look like a delicious soup. I should like some myself."
She barely finished speaking. Her face said she might be sick at any moment.
"Again. What sits before you, Your Highness, is the most fragrant soup in all the world. Do not think of the hair, or of anything else that does not belong in it. Were you a pauper in the street, you would not even notice such things."
"Yes."
Alix suffered through the ordeal of learning to wear a mask. But if she was going to live as Waldemar's fiancée, this much was nothing. And such efforts brought their reward. She came to understand what pretense was. She learned how to lie. It was the making of a lady of society from an innocent girl.
And so Alix dressed her outward self to match the ideal image of royalty that people already carried in their minds. Once she was reasonably prepared, Waldemar took her to visit the Berlin Municipal Poorhouse.
"Oh — Your Highness the Prince. Your Highness. However have you come to a place as humble as this?"
The plump director hurried forward with his staff to receive them.
"Humble? This is an institution that serves the nation."
"I should think it a place one might take pride in, as well."
Waldemar and Alix addressed the director with every appearance of model courtesy and asked to be shown around.
"Then allow me to escort you through the house."
The director led them through the poorhouse. The facilities were, on the whole, clean, and the surroundings were not disagreeable. German institutions for the poor were not the ruthless places that English workhouses were; a person could still live in one. It was, ironically, a setting in which German militarism — which regarded human beings as a resource — might feel its superiority over English liberalism.
Waldemar followed the director and looked over the residents: the elderly, the disabled, the sick, and women who had no families left to them.
"How do you find life here?"
The people answered cautiously, a little uneasy.
"The city treats us well."
"Is there anything you feel ought to be improved?"
Everyone hesitated. Then a girl spoke up.
"I should like new blankets, and new clothes."
Alix answered her at once.
"Please bring new clothing and bedding."
Waldemar nodded to a servant, confirming the order. He was not so foolish as to undercut his fiancée's dignity over a trifle. And there had been nothing wrong with Alix's line.
"Do as Her Highness says."
"Yes, Your Highness."
Waldemar looked through the rooms and then inspected the workshop as well. Perhaps because such distinguished visitors had come, the working hours were comparatively short and the labor itself was light. After he had seen the workshop, he announced that he would personally serve the residents their meal.
"Y-Your Highness wishes to serve the food yourself?"
"Yes. My fiancée will join me."
"Her Highness as well?"
The director's face said he could not quite believe it.
"Yes. Would that be a difficulty?"
Alix asked it politely. The director waved both hands.
"No — no, it would be no difficulty at all."
Waldemar changed into black work clothes and tied an apron over them himself. Alix, for her part, put a long cotton apron on over her ordinary dress. When a man and a woman who looked, at a glance, unmistakably noble took their places at the serving line, the residents reacted with frank curiosity.
"Who did they say it was?"
"Didn't you hear earlier? It's the Prince and the Princess."
"Then they're quality, aren't they."
Waldemar began ladling food onto the trays of those who had lined up at the counter. The portions were enormous.
"I never imagined I'd see soup with this much meat in it."
The first man to be served took his tray with trembling hands.
"Next, please."
"Yes — coming."
Waldemar went on heaping food onto each tray without the slightest restraint. Watching him, the director wiped the sweat from his brow and ventured a cautious word of advice.
"Ah — Your Highness. You must not give quite so much. If the portions are not kept in hand, those at the back of the line may receive nothing at all."
"Ah. Is that so?"
Waldemar called one of his attendants at once.
"We shall need more food. A hundred servings? Fetch that much for now."
"Understood, Your Highness."
After that, the director said nothing further. Alix, seeing how the matter had been settled, began to ladle as generously as she pleased.
They had come, from the first, to be seen volunteering — not to volunteer. That was not to say they had come to make a wreck of the place. Whenever their overflowing portions opened a hole in the day's supply, they simply bought more food and filled it. The residents, therefore, had nothing to complain of. On the contrary, they hoped the two of them would go on serving for as long as they liked.
"It would appear that everyone has more or less been seen to."
When the serving was nearly finished, the director said it with great deference. Alix then announced that they would take their meal there as well.
"Then — may we have some too?"
The director received another shock.
"Of course there is no reason you should not. But I fear this soup will not suit the palates of such distinguished persons."
"Then I shall serve it myself."
Alix did not hesitate. She filled a tray generously with soup.
"How much will Your Highness take?"
"A generous portion."
The director and the staff alike looked on with distinctly uneasy faces. The prince and princess filled their bowls, then walked quite calmly in among the residents and sat down in empty places. Under a thicket of curious eyes, Waldemar and Alix tasted the soup.
"It's quite edible."
They did not, of course, mean a word of it. Waldemar had always been a practiced liar, and Alix, after her lessons in the art, now knew how to wear a pretense. Without so much as a flicker in either face, they emptied their bowls as though they were eating something perfectly decent.
"Th-they really ate it all."
Had the soup actually turned out well this time? The question itched at the director. He stole a taste from what remained in the pot.
"Pah. Pah."
The soup, made with salted meat, was as salty and as cheerless as ever. How on earth had they eaten the stuff as if it were good?
Waldemar and Alix remained at the poorhouse the entire day, and they stayed for supper as well.
"You have worked very hard today."
"And you have worked hard as well, Director."
Alix offered the greeting so sweetly that the director, not knowing what else to do with himself, bowed his head.
Their day's work appeared, without delay, in the next morning's Berlin papers.
Of course, a piece of that length had not been written for the love of it. The reporter received his research fee and his manuscript fee; the proprietor received his advertising money. Every last character set in that article had been, in effect, minted from coin.
"Image," Waldemar observed, "has never been free."
He went on manufacturing stories for the press after that. The poorhouse, then an orphanage, then a hospital — he made a diligent circuit of every place where there were people who might be seen to need help.
"What? His Highness and Her Highness paid a visit?"
"They bathed the orphans with their own hands — and tended the patients?"
"Truly merciful and virtuous people!"
Each time, an entirely different newspaper ran a piece of its own. Ordinary Berliners, who at first had not even been aware of who Prince Waldemar was, now came to know his face from the papers.
"Prince Waldemar? I know who he is. He's the one who goes about volunteering so diligently."
The good name of Waldemar and Alix, which had belonged to the upper circles alone, began at last to reach the public at large. To keep that reputation in hand, Waldemar also made a steady practice of giving — always in his own name, and in Alix's.
And those facts, without fail, were given to the world by the press.
"If you do not make a good deed known," Waldemar said, "no one will ever know it was done."
Waldemar's Goebbels — Harden — saw to it that whenever the prince and princess performed even the slightest act of charity, the newspapers made a noise about it. In the course of all this they grew steadily more famous. And a nickname earned in earlier days was brought back into the light.
"So Prince Waldemar was that fellow — the famous romantic. No wonder."
"Ah. So those two were that couple."
Waldemar captured the attention of the ladies all over again. Once the spotlight had found them, he and Alix monopolized the interest of society as well.
"Your Highness. Will you be making another gift to society this time?"
"If it is needed."
Waldemar never declined an opportunity to be noticed.
"Even so, you ought to keep back what Your Highness requires for your own household. You must think of Her Highness, your fiancée."
To the prepared questions of their friends in society, Alix delivered her prepared line.
"I am quite all right. So long as His Highness is at my side, I could endure a life with nothing but a single dress and one set of bedding."
A model couple, in every particular — and the very picture of model royalty. People did not stint in their praise of Waldemar's character, or of Alix's. Watching it all, Harden left a brief assessment.
Waldemar and Alix staged, with considerable brilliance, an image cut precisely to those expectations. And they intended to go on doing so.
Waldemar smiled as he watched Alix — still a little awkward, and performing her part splendidly all the same.